REPRIEVING A SLUM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20300, 6 July 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

REPRIEVING A SLUM.

THE MAYFLOWER MUSEUM* AN OLD TUDOR HOUSE. As & rale thera is a cheer when a slum is condemned, but in Plymouth there wsis a cheer when a alum was reprieved, and although people hate slums they readily echo the cheer.

This slum has proimsed not to be a slmm any more, for one thing; for another thing it is the old Elizabethan and Jacobean area of Plymouth lying below the citadel. People say that this is the first time the Ministry of Health has given its consent to the reconditioning 6f a slum area, A delightful plan is now afoot. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings hopes to restore, without altering, the old Tudor house known as 22, New Street, and then it is to be fillad with furniture of its own period, so that visitors will be able to see how people lived, slept and amused themselves when Drake walked the streets of Plymouth. Not long after Drake sailed to scatter the Armada, the Pilgrim Fathers sailed in the Mayflower from the same port to seek freedom across the seas, and of course the old house and its solid furniture did not alter much between 1588 and 1620.

Americans thus will be able to say " This was the sort of home our ancestors left when the Mayflower set off on her immortal voyage. They used these hard, comfortless chairs, these solid pewter plates, and these huge beds. They loved music; what quaint instruments! They loved books, too—look at tho brown, tattered pages of this book of verse, and this dog's-eared bundle of tracts! Here is the sort of needlework the women did. Here are the letters the master of the house has just opened—but no, they lira three centuries old."

New Street is not new, only a little newer than the New Forest. But it will bo very charming if the antiquaries can bring back its youth to No. 32. They do not yet know they will get the £2OOO necessary, nor have they decided whether the house shall be called the Drake or the Mayflower Museum, but it is not expected that Plymouth will allow the plan to fail. Lord and Lady Astor have started the fund by giving one tenth of the sum required.